Liquid fuels and chemicals from biomass resources arouse much interests in research and development. Fast pyrolysis of biomass has the potential to effectively change solid biomass materials into liquid products. However, bio-oil from traditional pyrolysis processes is difficult to apply in industry, because of its complicated composition, high oxygen content, low stability, etc. Upgrading or refining of the bio-oil should be performed for industrial application of biomass pyrolysis. Often, the process would be done in a separate reactor downstream of the pyrolysis process. In this paper, a laboratory scale micro test facility was constructed, wherein the pyrolysis of pine and catalytic upgrading of the resulting vapors were closely coupled in one reactor. The composition of vapor effluent was monitored with a molecular beam mass spectrometer (MBMS) for the online evaluation of the catalyst performance. Catalysts from different origin were tested and compared for the effectiveness of pyrolysis vapor upgrading, namely commercial zeolites, Ni based steam reforming catalyst, CaO, MgO, and several laboratory-made catalysts. The reaction temperature for catalytic upgrading varied between 400 and 600 centigrade, and the gaseous residence time ranged from 0.1 second to above 2 second, to simulate the conditions in industrial application. It is revealed that some catalysts are active in transform most of primary biomass pyrolysis vapors into hydrocarbons, resulting in nonoxygenated products, which is beneficial for downstream utilization. Others are not as effective, results in minor improvement compared with blank test results.

Evaluation of catalysts from different origin for vapor phase upgrading in biomass pyrolysis

244th National Meeting (2012)

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